about the legal limit of drunkenness. He replied, “When a person’s cares have vanished and he blurts out the secret he used to keep concealed.” The answer pleased the audience, and his esteem rose in their eyes (1).

Ibn al-Jawzi says in al-Muntaẓam (2): “He was afflicted with love for a youth called Muḥammad ibn Jāmiʿ—some say Muḥammad ibn Zukhruf—but he observed chastity and piety, and that remained his habit until it became the cause of his death.”

I say: in this he enters under the report transmitted from Ibn ʿAbbās both as mawqūf and marfūʿ: “Whoever falls in love, conceals it, remains chaste, and dies, dies a martyr” (3).

It was also said of him that he regarded passionate love as permissible, provided it remained within the bounds of chastity.

He himself related that he had been smitten with love since his days in the elementary school, and that while still young he composed the book al-Zahra on the subject; his father Dāwūd would occasionally look through parts of it.

He and Abū al-ʿAbbās Ibn Surayj frequently debated in the presence of the judge Abū ʿUmar Muḥammad ibn Yūsuf, and people marvelled at the brilliance and elegance of their discussions.

During one such debate Ibn Surayj said to him, “Your book al-Zahra (4) has made you more famous than this field ever will.” He retorted, “You reproach me for al-Zahra when you cannot even finish reading it properly! I composed that book in jest—produce one like it in earnest if you can.”

Judge Abū ʿUmar Muḥammad ibn Yūsuf relates: “One day Abū Bakr ibn Dāwūd and I were riding when we heard a slave-girl singing some of his verses (5):

I voice the smouldering of a heart you are destroying—
like a sick man’s plaint to a friend who soothes his pain.
My ailment grows heavier with every passing day,
yet you make light of the weight of what I sustain.”